Plato’s Beautiful Symmetry

Saller, Heinrich

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-58664-9_4

Heinrich Saller²

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Abstract

In the history of physics, the regularity, symmetry and beauty of the five Platonic solids in three-dimensional Euclidean space induced philosophers and scientists to use them for a description of nature — by Plato directly, by Kepler in his mathematical-religious hymns concerning our solar system, today for elementary particles.

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Notes

1.
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804).
2.
Democritos, around -(460–370), Leukippos (?), around -440.
3.
Pierre Gassendi (1592–1655).
4.
David -(1004–965).
5.
Ludwig Sylow (1832–1918).
6.
Pierre de Fermat (1601–1665).
7.
Diophantus of Alexandria, around (200–284).
8.
Nikolai Lobachevsky (1792–1856), Janos Bolyai (1802–1860).
9.
Theaitetos of Athens, around -(417–369).
10.
Archimedes of Syracuse, around -(287–212).
11.
René Descartes (1596–1650).
12.
Richard Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983).
13.
Johann Daniel Titius (1729–1796), Johann Elert Bode (1747–1826).
14.
Ludwig Schläfli (1814–1895), Harald Scott McDonald Coxeter (1907–2003).
15.
Hermann Amandus Schwarz (1843–1921).
16.
Thales of Miletus -(624–546).
17.
Felix Klein (1849–1925).
18.
Gerolamo Cardano (1501–1576).
19.
Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier (1768–1830).
20.
Willem de Sitter (1872–1934).
21.
Wilhelm Killing (1847–1923).
22.
Élie Cartan (1869–1951).
23.
Igor Dmitrievich Ado (1910–1983).
24.
Nathan Jacobson (1910–1999).
25.
Camille Jordan (1838–1922).
26.
Heinrich Lenz (1804–1865), Carl Runge (1856–1927).
27.
Ernest Rutherford (1871–1937).
28.
Eugene Dynkin (1924–2014).
29.
Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961).
30.
Walther Gerlach (1889–1979), Otto Stern (1888–1969).

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Werner-Heisenberg Institute, Max Planck Institute for Physics, Munich, Bayern, Germany
Heinrich Saller

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Heinrich Saller
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Correspondence to Heinrich Saller .

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Saller, H. (2017). Plato’s Beautiful Symmetry. In: Operational Symmetries. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-58664-9_4

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-58664-9_4
Published: 20 June 2017
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-58663-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-58664-9
eBook Packages: Physics and AstronomyPhysics and Astronomy (R0)

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